Aesthetics
I’ve been reading the New Yorker pretty regularly since Trump got elected, thanks to some useful person in the nabe who puts them in a Little Library a couple of days before the publication date. Reading it more regularly I’ve started to wonder what the hell has happened to their cartoon department, and why they have so many now that are just not funny even a little bit. Cartoon after cartoon after cartoon I look at and move on, stonefaced. They are not funny. But some of them are not just not funny, they’re also faintly or intensely repellent, and of those, the standout is one Edward Steed. I just decided to search him on Google images and find his cartoons as hideous as ever.
One from Facebook:
Weird, isn’t it? The New Yorker used to have great cartoons. Or am I missing something?
I assume the first one is an Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel reference, possibly suggesting that kids have always been the same, but it’s neither funny nor well-drawn. The second one, though, is just a confusing mess. Men crawling through the desert and volunteers handing out water as if at a marathon; what point is he trying to make?
I’ve never been a huge New Yorker cartoon fan although they have published some true classics from time to time. These don’t seem to be in that category. Not my cup of tea, but clearly, based upon my own experiences creating comics, what do I know. (Wait, maybe it’s a dosage problem.)
Part of the problem for those trying to create topical humor, is the shear absurdity of current events which makes it harder and harder to illustrate irony or attempt satire without it turning into pure exasperation.
For what this may be worth to B&W readers, a segment on The Brian Lehrer Show from WNYC the other day was, “The Women Cartoonists of The New Yorker”. One can listen to the segment here. The discussion revolves around an exhibit of women who have drawn cartoons for the magazine since its founding.
I don’t understand the first cartoon at all.
The second cartoon might be a satire on society’s callous and patronising ( the woman is celebrating by waving flags) indifference to people on the margin.
The dying men are given a cup of water and sent on their way.
The second is a riff on a multi-decade trope. Just like the desert island castaways and the dog cartoons, they have thirst-in-the-desert cartoons. I had the same thought as RJW, too, on top,of that.
As for the drawing style, I long ago gave up on understanding why some drawing styles are trendy. And a great deal of the New Yorker fiction—heresy!—leaves me wondering what the editors think a story should be…